Hyderabad: Teachers, students give fresh lease of life to lake

Hafeezpet: By breathing life back into a dying lake in the city of Nizams and pearls, a husband-wife team of educationists, has proved that positive change can begin even from school itself.

City-based founder of Fountain head Global School, Meghana Musunuri and husband Sridhar Vunnam, didn't have the smallest inkling that a routine interaction session would evolve into a children-propelled movement and ultimately rescue a 15-acre lake from certain death.

That is precisely what happened, when Meghana's freewheeling talk on children's rights and responsibilities, sometime in June 2019, set the tone for things to come.

"To help them understand the concept of their rights, I was giving them examples of lakes, forests, rivers and asked them, who do you think they belong to? The younger kids replied god, and the older ones said the government. Then I said, you know, they belong to you.

The conversation veered to ownership, following which the kids joined hands to clean MeediKunta lake located in Hafeezpet. which was a kilometre away from their school.

Children along with Meghana and Sridhar, for the past three years waded through the friction and removed silt.

The groundwork began with the customary rounds of government offices for obtaining the mandatory permissions and as many as 120 went about their mission with an awareness kit for the children. Mascot called Cheru' symbolising the lake goddess boosted the morale of students.

By July 2019, the blueprint for salvaging MeediKunta lake was worked out. Fundraising drives, awareness runs and walks, tea parties near the lake, flash mobs, the team stepped up on the promotional efforts.

The initial drive resulted in collections, barely a fraction of the estimated cost of dredging and cleaning operations that required the hire of specialized equipment and manpower. Despite all efforts, they could collect only Rs 10 lakh which was less than the required fund. As per estimates, around Rs 2 crore would be required to repair and clean up the lake. However, the couple decided to plunge in with their own money rather than see the kids disheartened.

Sridhar recalls that Covid lockdown actually proved helpful for them, "It was a tough job but we didn't stop till it was completed.He hired tractors from his village for transporting the garbage and other diggings as local lorries were difficult to arrange amid lockdown.

Gradually, local people understood our good intentions and started coming forward to help us in terms of equipment hire and other requirements.

The year 2020 was all about completing revival measures such as dredging the lake bed, redirecting sewage inflows away from the lake, shutting down unauthorized borewells in the lake storage area, repairing the lake embankment, and laying a walkway around it. While now 2021 the MeediKunta lake is a picture of serendipity.

Asked about the takeaways from the initiative, Meghana says, "Practical problem solving is the way to bridge the gap between school learning and real-life issues."